My Mom and sister are up here in Seattle visiting me. Well, supposedly. Actually they are in Vancouver, and will stay there until the day before they leave. (Mom is still wondering why she doesn't know anything about my life. Hmm.) But they were here for a whole day, and Beanie hurt her knee running and needed an Elliptical Trainer to work out on in the morning. "Elliptical Trainer," I said, "what's that?" Images of the NASA multi-axis trainer flashed into my head.

Well, it looks like what you'd get if you had a broken stair climber, cross country trainer, and stationary bike and you attached the important parts of each of those together. It's the latest fad in gym fitness. Zero impact! Wacky! And not an easy thing to improvise.

Fortunately, Helen had a day pass to her Gym and passed it on to Bean, who had a great time ellipsing or whatever the verb is for using one of those things. Wobbling? Waddling?